Faded Glory: An experience where dance and photography meet

For this week's blog post, I wanted to share a little bit more about who I am and other ways that I am utilizing my camera knowledge to create work. Currently I am a student at the University of North Carolina Greensboro pursuing a Bachelor's of Fine Arts in Dance Performance and Choreography. Dance has always been my passion, and attending UNCG has only fueled that love for the art form and made me determined to find my place in a world saturated with talent and creativity. One of the ways that I feel unique in the dance world is my photographic eye.

This past semester I took a class with the illustrious Robin Gee that dove into the genre Screen Dance or Dance for the Camera. It was a class that going into it I knew I would love, because it blended my two passions into one form. Of course, cinematography is MUCH different than still photography, and I had a lot to learn, but the fundamentals were mostly the same. Generally, this genre gives choreographers and filmmakers alike the opportunity to display a body in a unique way. In this class we continuously talked about the difference between live dance on a stage vs. what could be displayed on a screen. We discovered that films can be pretty intimate and evoke strong feelings in their audience due to the proximity of the lens to the subject. The shots that filmmakers can capture, could never be seen in a live dance unless the audience was sitting in the performers' laps!

An aspect of Screen Dance that I personally connected with is the ability to tell a story through movement-whether that is the subject moving, or the camera, or both! With my photography, I strive to find the stories within the places or people that I photograph, because it allows my audience to relate to the subject and gain something from my work. Similarly, I found that in my investigations with Screen Dance, I was able to find a choreographic, story-telling voice, while still framing beautiful scenes and connecting with people in a unique, collaborative process. It was/is the perfect connecting point of my worlds!

The class work culminated into a final project where I was to make my own dance film. Although it was an incredibly busy semester for me, I found myself brainstorming about this project often and weighing my options about what I wanted to portray through film. The result was a product that became near and dear to my heart because of the dancer I had, and the subject I chose, it is titled Faded Glory.

You can watch the entire film below, but before you do that I wanted to share some insight on the process of Faded Glory.

Faded Glory features one of my all time favorite dancers and humans, Becca Johanson. I chose Becca for this project because I was inspired and personally invested in her story. It gave me an opportunity to artistically portray an embodied experience through film. As we know from my last post, and if you know me personally or from my Instagram, last spring I studied abroad in South Africa. It was the most life-changing experience I have had thus far, evolving me into the person that is writing this blog today. I got to hike, take photos, dance, swim with penguins, camp under the stars, canoe through a secluded lagoon, hear a lion roar in the wild, jump off a 200m bridge and be face to face with countless elephants. Pretty special, right? Well, while I was off hiking through South Africa, Becca was hiking through New Zealand experiencing the same types of adventures (except all the safari animals, she visited Hobbiton instead). Both of us had these incredible experiences in other places and when we were finally reunited we looked at each other and said, "where should we go next?!" Of course by that point we were both completely out of money, but the wonderlust had officially set in for life!

A couple of months after arriving back in America, Becca was restless. I'm pretty sure that every time we had a conversation it would relate back to how she needed to "get out of this country" and be somewhere else. I am not going to lie, I was right there with her, I was just less vocal about it. Adjusting back (aka reverse culture shock) is terribly difficult, and even a year later we constantly talk to each other about traveling the world. I connected personally with Becca's struggle to be somewhere else, while still loving the people she was with and her present life, so when it came time to choose and pitch a topic for my dance film, I asked her if we could collaborate and make something about her embodied experience. As long as we could find filming days that fit in with both of our crazy schedules, she was on board.

I wanted the film to transfer the audience to different locations, as a way to mimic what Becca experienced while traveling. I thought about using various symbols such as a map or a push pin to portray this concept of transversing from place to place or having a destination in mind, but I ultimately decided to focus on the physical representations of travel that Becca already had in her room. College girls love to decorate- and you know who loves to decorate even more? College girls that just came back from study abroad! Her room is covered in photos from New Zealand and I found that these personal memoirs were exactly what I would need to make this film personal, genuine, and believable. The photograph to the left is a postcard that is hanging on Becca's bedroom mirror. It is an example of one of my favorite shots from the scene in her bedroom, but also displays one of the symbols that I utilized. The film begins with a shot of her entire bedroom and then focuses in on Becca's feet. Choreographically, this work is incredibly gestural, emphasizing the hands and feet. This is apparent in the bedroom scene with the various close up shots that isolate these parts of the body. As this scene continues and begins to develop, the shots become much shorter, building the momentum of the overall film. The underlying plot line that I personally worked with, was that Becca was disturbed in the night with her wonderlust and memories of this amazing experience that she had. These emotions make her restless, so she finds herself tossing and turning in her bed up to a frenzy that eventually settles into a deep, peaceful sleep.

The next shot that the audience sees is pictured at the beginning of this blog post. Becca is gazing up into a grove of trees with blinding light creating a dazzling magic hue across the sky. The viewer has been transported, to a different place for sure, but the timing is unknown. Up until this point, there has been no sound score for the film, but I decided to use "Catch the Light" by Jonathan Jowett and Nigel Mullaney for the second half of the film to further contrast the halves. I find that the music adds to the wandering, light ambiance of this part of the film, that compliments how Becca meanders from place to place.

We shot this half in the early morning light at the Guilford Courthouse National Military Park in Greensboro, North Carolina. I chose this location because I felt that it had many different personalities to explore, and a variety of scenes that I could combine together and still create the feeling that Becca was transversing different locations. I had her wear whatever was comfortable to her and suggested that she look more pedestrian than dancer. She chose to wear her normal hiking wear, which I think goes along with the film incredibly well.

When composing a storyboard, I wanted to continue to play with the choreographic motifs, but I wanted them to develop either through the types of shots that I used or the physical movement. When we first arrived at the park, I taught Becca a short phrase that I manipulated off of the movement that was in the original "bed phrase". I created the movement sequence to interact with the environment around her and eventually have her swinging around a tree. I also found interesting angles to shoot from, such as the one pictured to the right. An element of the environment that I discovered while filming was the juxtaposing textures that I decided to highlight in order to create tension and harmony. In this shot in particular, Becca quickly grazes passed mid-air, but the lens is focused on the texture in the sidewalk. I used this particular technique frequently in this film, because I found that a shallow depth of field gave the shots a more dreamlike, magical quality while also keeping the subject sharp against a creamy blurred background. It worked for this film, because I was able to isolate the different body parts and images that I wanted to use to effectively develop the narrative.

One of these important choreographic symbols/motifs that I used to help develop the story was Becca's fist. While she was in her bed, she held her hand in a fist, tossing and turning, but while she was out exploring in nature, the fist was suddenly opened into an upward facing palm that traced her face as she looked skyward. This motif actually came to me spontaneously while we were on set, but I kept finding other ways to include it that helped the film evolve. As you watch the film, I encourage you to notice how Becca's hands play into the story- they are the main foreshadowing of the ending.

Faded Glory takes the viewer from a wooded grove to a meadow, where Becca's story begins to travel from one of peaceful exploration to one of vigorous motion that reprises the restless emotions from the beginning of the film. There are a series of quick edits that push the film along until it's end. (That I won't spoil so that you are able to watch it and enjoy it yourself. ) Although there are parts of it that looking back on I would love to fine tune, I feel that this film really captures the genuine nature of who Becca is and her experience. It is a story relatable for virtually any viewer, and stirs at least in me, the desire to continue pursuing my passion for travel and art.

It was such a blast to film Faded Glory, I found myself climbing in trees, laying in the dirt, and dangling a wheel in front of Becca's face for hours on end, which is exactly how I love to spend my time! I hope that this post was intriguing to you and helped you uncover a little bit more about Faded Glory, Screen Dance, or me if nothing else. The film is below, I hope you enjoy! Stay tuned for the next blog post coming next week!

#Screendance #DanceFilm #nature #dance #choreogrpahy